The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 366
just a wash, on the effective price per gallon. So, the only benefit is that America
gets to retain the one billion dollars that leaves America every day to pay for
foreign oil. These dollars may never make their way back to America. If we can
avoid sending the $1 billion a day ($360 billion per year) out of the country, and
instead use those dollars here to pay salaries and buy domestically produced
goods, those dollars become a stimulus for the economy without having to print
additional dollars and devalue those already in circulation. Then, if those dollars
are spent on American workers and American products, we actually wind up
recycling the dollars and multiplying its stimulus effect several-fold. It could be
possible to recycle the $360 billion 3, 4, 5, 6 times, giving us a trillion dollar-plus
stimulus every year for every year that we do without gasoline. If the $800 billion
stimulus package in 2008-9 was significant in helping our economy, imagine
what that this stimulus could do for America.
Ms. Carlson goes on to decry the amount of corn being used for ethanol. She
attempts to re-ignite the preposterous flames of the "food vs. fuel" argument.
She writes, "we’re putting nearly 40% of the US corn crop in our gas tanks."
Central in trying to make this an alarming statistic is the imagery that just as the
corn is about to be distributed to millions of corn-on-the-cob deprived starving
people around the world, greedy ethanol producers swoop in and buy up all the
food to be turned into fuel. In reality, this is not how the system works.
There is no question that more corn being grown in America today is being used
for ethanol production than as compared to, say, 10 years ago. But the reason
for this is that the corn is specifically grown to be used for ethanol. There is
demand for the crop so farmers grow more. This means that farmers (American
farmers) can grow something that is profitable. Moreover, it means that they
can grow something without having to turn to public assistance.
In 2000, U.S. corn production was 251,854 metric tons. In 2013, U.S. corn production was about 353,715 metric tons. Despite the increase in the amount of
corn grown between the two years the actual amount of corn available for human consumption remained the same. Additionally, although most of the world
outside of the western hemisphere does not eat corn the way that we do, world
corn production reached record highs in 2014. Therefore, it's safe to say that
there were fewer starving Africans being deprived of non-nutritious high-fructose corn syrup products. Considering the obesity problem that we have in
America, even if we were depriving someone of corn chips perhaps we would
be doing them a favor.
